Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to Give Anne J. Schneider Lecture April 3Babbitt, a former Arizona governor, has a long history of involvement in Western water issues, including in Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Former Interior Secretary and
Arizona governor Bruce Babbitt will be the distinguished speaker
at the
2019 Anne J. Schneider Lecture on April 3 at the Crocker Art
Museum in downtown Sacramento.

Babbitt’s talk is titled “Parting the Waters — Will It Take a
Miracle?”

The event begins at 4 p.m. in the Crocker Art Museum’s Setzer
Auditorium. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with
Ellen Hanak, director of the Public Policy Institute of
California’s Water Policy Center, and a reception. Here
is where to sign up for the event, which is free.

Babbitt has a long history in water, both in Arizona and in
California. In 2016, former Gov. Jerry Brown hired Babbitt to
help gain support for conveyance to move water around or under
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

In 1994, as President Bill Clinton’s Interior secretary, Babbitt
helped negotiate the Bay-Delta Accord. That agreement initiated a
cooperative planning effort involving federal, state,
environmental and water officials intended to protect the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and provide water to urban and
agricultural interests.

And as governor of Arizona, Babbitt signed that state’s landmark
1980 Groundwater Management Act, which restricted expansion of
irrigated agriculture, set a goal of safe yield in certain areas
and set in motion a requirement that new municipal growth show it
has an assured 100-year water supply.

The annual lecture is named in honor of Anne J. Schneider, acknowledged
as one of the first women to become well-known and well-respected
in the field of California and Western water law. Justice Ronald
B. Robie gave the inaugural Anne J. Schneider Memorial Lecture in
May 2012.